Northern Latitudinal Railway financial model presented to the Government

The financial model of the Northern Latitudinal Railway has been drafted and presented to the Government, Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told RIA Novosti.

"The Northern Latitudinal Railway is one of the primary and promising projects for the development of the Arctic zone. This project has hard luck: its economic model constantly changed in accordance with changes in macroeconomic conditions, and when all the decisions were made, the budget of the relevant federal targeted program was significantly reduced, so we had to urgently search for investors and replace budgetary financing with extra-budgetary sources," he said.

"Now the financial model has been drafted and submitted to the Government. I very much hope that the project will be launched in the near future, as it is of great significance for the entire Russian transportation system," the minister said.

RIA Novosti reports that Russian Railways and the government of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area previously signed an agreement on a joint implementation of the project to build the Northern Latitudinal Railway to run through Obskaya, Salekhard, Nadym, Khorei, Pangody, Novy Urengoi, and Korotchayevo, along with the surrounding infrastructure. The railway will stretch 707 km in total. The projected cargo traffic volume is 23.9 million metric tons (mainly gas condensate and oil cargo). The construction is scheduled for 2018-2022.

Under the concession agreement, the concessionaire, using owned and borrowed funds, will build the railway part of bridges over the Ob and Nadym rivers with railway approaches and the Salekhard — Nadym (Khorei) railway section. Russian Railways will undertake to modernize and upgrade the Pangody — Novy Urengoi — Korotchayevo railway section. The authorities of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area will finance the construction of the automotive part of the bridge over the Ob River.